British-based engineering company, Paqua, has launched a sustainable carbon-free water purification system to provide safe water to areas of the world that are off-grid, or have low power supply. The innovative system, called PaquaVida, uses electrolysis (salt) and filtration instead of hazardous chemicals for water purification from source waters such as ponds, lakes and rivers, and can run using solar and wind.

The system’s launch follows UK trials over a number of years in collaboration with the University of the West of England. Further Europe-wide testing has resulted in Albania, Romania and Greece now having fully operational systems supplying fresh drinking water that meets country-specific and EU Drinking Water standards to homes, businesses and hospitals.

The engineering team behind the groundbreaking project is led by Simon Escott. “An estimated 2 billion people worldwide lack access to drinking water from improved water sources* and it is predicted to be become more scarce,” he said.

“Our mission from the start has been to design a better and easier way to help more people get clean water. We have created a system that can continuously supply safe, fresh drinking water, is self-cleaning and doesn’t require any maintenance, apart from the occasional top-up of salt. Running costs are so low that it costs a fraction of the cost of buying water in, so people can move away from transported tanked water, or move their current drinking water treatment system to this more sustainable option. To have achieved all that we set out to do is amazing and we have been overwhelmed by the response we are receiving from communities all across the globe.”